


Sponges and Stone

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28205547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Conflict resolution à la Elric turns out all right.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 16
Kudos: 426
Collections: Roy/Ed Week 2020





	Sponges and Stone

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of "What's wrong?" for [Roy/Ed Week](https://royedpalooza.tumblr.com) Day 4! _Me_ , picking the _opposite_ of every prompt I thought I would? Apparently it's more likely than we think. XD
> 
> I'm not sure if my brain actually wanted to write this… or just realized that I've written for enough of the other days now that there's a distinct possibility of a bingo, and decided to start desperately throwing things at the wall. :x I figure one more "A conversation at a table" scene won't kill any of us, so I hope you enjoy, or at least don't hate it. XD''' ♥

Al has accused Ed of having the emotional perceptiveness of a damp sponge. He added something about it being a really well-used one, with most of the scrubby side worn down, and little bits of gross stuff stuck in the holes, and also something about teeming with bacteria that didn’t sound particularly fair. Ed hadn’t really kept listening after that, because he’d gotten the point, but Al was clearly enjoying beating the metaphor to death, so Ed just nodded for a while and let him.

The point, though, is that sponges absorb things. Maybe? The more important point is that Ed doesn’t have Al’s natural talent for reinterpreting what people say in real time and figuring out what they actually _mean_ by it, but the critical part is that he knows that. He’s had to grapple with it a lot over the years, and he’s come to terms with the fact that he has to work a little harder to make sense of the misleading things that people say, and the inexplicable nonsense that they do.

Maybe that’s part of the sponge thing. People are messy. People are illogical and contradictory and frustrating as _all_ hell.

But Ed has put a lot of time into learning how to observe them so that he can try to work backwards from the weird stuff and figure out what’s really going on.

There’s definitely weird stuff going on at the dinner table tonight.

Ed has some lab notes next to his plate, which—for the record, no matter what Al says—isn’t weird. Roy doesn’t mind that. Ed asked. He had to take it on faith that Roy was being honest instead of just polite, but given the way that Roy complains endlessly and with great dramatic flair about Ed’s snoring, he’s pretty sure that he’d have heard about it if Roy had a problem with this one too.

But that’s part of the weird thing. Normally, if Ed starts rambling about research, Roy will prop his chin up on one hand and drag the tines of his fork around on his plate and smile a lot and offer questions and commentary and generally act like the world’s second-best sounding board, and it’s great.

Tonight, though—

Tonight, Roy’s grip on his fork looks a little too tight, and it mostly seems like he’s listening, but his eyes keep going kind of distant.

Ed stops midway through a sentence, and Roy turns the fork over in his fingers instead of prompting him with a promising thought.

“Hey,” Ed says. Roy glances up, and his eyes are a little too tired, and a little too tight at the edges. “Are you—”

“Fine,” Roy says, pushing his chair back. “I’m fine.”

Ed opens his mouth to say something, but Roy moves to pick up his mostly empty plate—and _misses_ , and swipes the side of his water glass, which tips over and pours itself all over the tabletop—

It splashes all over both their plates, and the puddle swells so quickly that it’s drenched the nearest corner of Ed’s notes before he can snatch them up and away.

He’s been working on these for three solid days, which Roy would know if he’d been listening; and the panic as the water blurs the ink too fast to fix with alchemy sends hot words knifing up his throat—

“ _Shit_ , Roy! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Roy’s hands work fast and mechanically precise—righting the glass, grabbing both their plates. His face shuttered up; his shoulders have gone so tight you could throw a rock at his back, and it would bounce off like a racquetball. He strides to the sink and—drops the dishes. Just _drops_ them.

Ed stands very still, clutching his notes to his chest, as Roy plants both hands on the edge of the sink and curls them until his knuckles whiten.

Ed’s heart pounds in his ears for a few seconds, and then the gears start turning.

Roy is never like this. They’ve never talked about it in so many words, but Ed put the pieces together—Roy saw what he was capable of, when he was faced with Hughes’s killer, and swore off anger. It’s not that he doesn’t _get_ mad; the brass drive him batty, and he’ll rant for ages, and Ed can hear it in his voice when it’s more serious than just venting pent-up steam.

But he doesn’t get angry at people he loves. He just… doesn’t. Life’s too fucking short.

Ed can be clumsy—Ed’s mind is always elsewhere, whether it’s in the gutter or the clouds; Ed’s body is misbalanced and misused, and he always either overthinks it or runs on autopilot. Ed breaks a lot of stuff. That’s why he’s so good at building things; he had to learn how to fix ’em first. There aren’t any fights to find himself in anymore; there aren’t any shots of adrenaline to stabilize him. Life is smaller, and safer, and _better_ in every possible way. Bizarrely, he kind of likes it when he trips over stuff, because there isn’t any danger to it. There’s nothing to lose when he lets a longer thought unfurl and loses track of his hands.

But Roy never does that.

Roy is _always_ in control.

Scarier than the fact that Roy knocked his hand against the glass in the first place is the fact that he didn’t catch it before it fell. Roy being distracted enough to tip something over is one thing; Roy being too distracted to _react_ —

“Roy,” Ed says. He puts the notes down on the seat of his chair without taking his eyes off of Roy’s wrists, his hands, the locked elbows, the lowered head. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.” Each word is clipped out into one neat little syllable, meticulously articulated. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t—listening to you.”

“That’s not the problem,” Ed says, which is only the damn truth. That part is a symptom; it’s a side-effect; it’s a data point; and he isn’t interested in it except for what it points to—what it means. “What’s going on? You’re—”

Roy casts a glare over the nearer shoulder that stops Ed with one foot raised to step closer to him. “Ed, just _leave_ it. Leave it alone. I know the spirit of scientific inquiry that has possessed you makes you like a dog with a bone; but for _once_ , just—don’t. Just move on.”

Ed sets his jaw. He hasn’t missed this game, but he remembers how to win it.

“No,” he says.

Roy swings the glare down to attempt to incinerate their defenseless dishes and hisses through his teeth. “Sometimes—I fucking _wish_ you would just—”

“Not care?” Ed says. “Too late; your own fault. What the hell is going on? You can just _tell_ me instead of getting all pissed off and trying to piss _me_ off to keep you company.”

Roy whirls around, running both hands up over his face instead, and Ed stands very still. Roy crosses the room—away from him, towards the china cabinet—in five sharp strides and then… breathes.

The breathing part goes on for long enough that Ed has to swallow potential interruptions twice.

And then Roy grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes for a few seconds before he pushes them both back into his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It sounds like him this time, rather than like a robot that had gained control of his vocal cords. “I didn’t… mean to… do that.” He takes another breath, deeper still; he lets it out and glances over sideways at Ed. “You’re right.”

Ed looks at him for a long second, biting down hard on the impulse to fire back the first thing that he can think of. That’s how he used to keep stoking shit like this until it blew up in his face—in the hopes that, for a little while, he could feel excited and alive.

He ends up settling on the truth again, which is interesting in a way that he’ll have to unpack later. “I didn’t say it to be right,” he says. “I said it ’cause I’m worried about you.”

“I know,” Roy says, and for a second he looks bewildered by it. Ed can’t tell whether it’s the concept that’s surprising, or the fact that Roy _does_ know. The fact that he trusts it. “I…” He fluffs at his hair, adjusts his collar, and shoves both hands into his pockets. “I don’t want to do that to you—what I did just now.” He wets his lips, glances up at Ed and then away again— “The clearest thing I remember about my parents is that they used to fight like _animals_ about… just… nothing. Insipid things. And it used to make me not want to exist.”

“Hey,” Ed says, over the rhythm of his heart in his ears. “It’s okay. We’re okay. Just… talk to me, all right? Something’s fucking you up right now. Maybe I can help.”

Roy manages a little smile, and a little eye contact, and both of those together look a lot like progress. “I… thank you. It’s… I didn’t… want to worry you about it. It should be business as usual, but it…” He gestures around himself; at the space between them. “Well. Evidently it isn’t.”

Ed goes over to the sink, picks out a dishtowel he’s always kind of disliked the color of, and comes back to start mopping up the water all over the tabletop. “That’s okay. This table needed a good soaking anyway. Oughta teach it a lesson.” He arches an eyebrow at Roy, who is still standing on the other side of the room looking unusually lost. “C’mon and sit down and tell me what the hell is going on, would’ya?”

Roy releases the next breath as a sigh, but his face relaxes first, and then his shoulders do. He detours to procure another dishtowel and then assists with the mopping, so Ed makes a point of trying to elbow him out of the way, which turns into a fake-tussle that ends with Ed ducking under Roy’s arm and swiping up the last of the water instants before Roy can reach it, and they both get a chance for a relieved little laugh.

“There’s a fairly unpopular pro-Ishvalan bill that’s coming in front of the brass tomorrow,” Roy says, in the same moment that he hooks an arm around Ed’s waist and prevents him from escaping with his wet towel trophy. “I’m going to have one chance to sell it to them, and I’m still not quite sure what to say.”

Ed blinks up at him for a second, and then puts the towel down. Roy can have this conversation holding a wet towel if he wants to, but Ed’s sure as hell not going to do it.

“You should practice on me,” he says. “Your speech or whatever.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. “It’s… extremely political. I think it’ll be very boring.”

“Roy,” Ed says, slowly, “I mean this in the most loving way possible, but you are the _single_ most dramatic person on the entire face of the planet. You aren’t boring when you’re putting on your socks. Besides—I used to poke holes in your logic all the time as a form of entertainment. Maybe I can help you come up with some stuff that you didn’t realize you’d need counterarguments for.”

Roy stares at him for a few seconds.

Then Roy closes his eyes and leans his forehead against Ed’s for several seconds more.

“That sounds nice,” he says.

“Good,” Ed says, grabbing the towel out of his hand and slinging it to the table, which makes a disgustingly satisfying sort of _slorp_. “Because I wasn’t planning on giving you a choice.”

“Ah,” Roy says.

Wrangling his way free of Roy’s arm sounds like too much effort, so Ed just clamps both hands down on it to keep it pinned against his waist and starts dragging them both towards the living room.

Roy pulls back a little, but he’s underestimating Ed’s ability to leverage body weight again. “What about—”

It doesn’t matter what he intends to finish that sentence with— _your notes_ ; _the dishes_ ; _dessert_.

“Don’t care,” Ed says, hauling harder. “Start talkin’.”

Roy sighs, as if Ed needs more ammo for the drama thing, but then he tangles his fingers up in Ed’s hair, tugs playfully, and follows.


End file.
